Seems a bit like a vicious circle to me. Hate against vegans leading to a hateful reaction, leading to vegans being perceived as assholes, leading to more hate against vegans etc. I guess it’s understandable, but it also seems counterproductive for spreading veganism.
Anecdotally, as a vegetarian I can say that the most vicious attacks against my lifestyle were not by meat eaters but some vegans (online-vegans to be precise, all I’ve met IRL were nice people). That’s despite me certainly never attacking veganism, I even think it’s morally superior to vegetarianism.
Eventually, maybe less aggro people will join and the cycle will break. Being ovo-lacto-veg is cool now. Or maybe not, because veganism isn’t based on ideas that modern people already agree with, but rather suggests a whole new system for how animals should be treated. Like, they’re against continuing to keep dogs as pets.
I really think this is an incredibly insightful take. I can’t say I hang out in many vegan specific corners of the Internet, but I know there is a very active and vocal segment of the Internet community that’s anti-vegan, I’ve heard stories of coordinated brigading attempts against vegan communities on the Internet.
I’d imagine it would be almost impossible to run an open and welcoming community when you are getting constantly inundated with hate messages, eventually it would become incredibly difficult to discern between a user who has genuine curiosity and one who is asking bad faith questions in order to trigger some kind of debate.
At this point in time you couldn’t pay me to become a mod in one of those communities, it really seems like a no win scenario.
Seems a bit like a vicious circle to me. Hate against vegans leading to a hateful reaction, leading to vegans being perceived as assholes, leading to more hate against vegans etc. I guess it’s understandable, but it also seems counterproductive for spreading veganism.
Anecdotally, as a vegetarian I can say that the most vicious attacks against my lifestyle were not by meat eaters but some vegans (online-vegans to be precise, all I’ve met IRL were nice people). That’s despite me certainly never attacking veganism, I even think it’s morally superior to vegetarianism.
It’s certainly a contradiction, understanding the true nature of the problem is the first step to fixing it.
Yup.
Eventually, maybe less aggro people will join and the cycle will break. Being ovo-lacto-veg is cool now. Or maybe not, because veganism isn’t based on ideas that modern people already agree with, but rather suggests a whole new system for how animals should be treated. Like, they’re against continuing to keep dogs as pets.
I really think this is an incredibly insightful take. I can’t say I hang out in many vegan specific corners of the Internet, but I know there is a very active and vocal segment of the Internet community that’s anti-vegan, I’ve heard stories of coordinated brigading attempts against vegan communities on the Internet.
I’d imagine it would be almost impossible to run an open and welcoming community when you are getting constantly inundated with hate messages, eventually it would become incredibly difficult to discern between a user who has genuine curiosity and one who is asking bad faith questions in order to trigger some kind of debate.
At this point in time you couldn’t pay me to become a mod in one of those communities, it really seems like a no win scenario.